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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<section id="fakeroot" xreflabel="fakeroot">
  <title>fakeroot (device node handling)</title>

  <para>The fakeroot program is designed to allow non-root users to perform
  actions that would normally require root privileges as part of the package
  generation process. It is used by the <xref linkend="rootfs_ipkg_class" />
  for root filesystem creation and by the <xref linkend="image_class" />
  for the creation of filesystem images. Some recipes also use fakeroot to
  assist with parts of the package installation (usually) or building where
  root privligeses are expected by the package.</para>

  <para>In particular fakeroot deals with:</para>

  <itemizedlist>
    <listitem>
      <para>Device nodes; and</para>
    </listitem>

    <listitem>
      <para>Ownership and group (uid &amp; gid) management.</para>
    </listitem>
  </itemizedlist>

  <section>
    <title>How fakeroot works</title>

    <para>First of all we'll look at an example of how the fakeroot process
    works when used manually.</para>

    <para>If we attempt to create a device node as a normal non-root user then
    the command will fail, telling is that we do not have permission to create
    device nodes:<screen>~%&gt; mknod hdc b 22 0
mknod: `hdc': Operation not permitted</screen>Yet the <xref
    linkend="image_class" /> is able to create device nodes and include
    them in the final images, all without the need to have root
    privileges.</para>

    <para>Let's try and create that node again, this time we'll run the
    commands from within a fakeroot process:<screen>~%&gt; ./tmp/staging/x86_64-linux/bin/fakeroot
~#&gt; mknod hdc b 22 0
~#&gt; ls -l hdc
brw-------  1 root root 22, 0 Aug 18 13:20 hdc
~#&gt;</screen>So it looks like we have successfully managed to create a
    device node, even though we did not have to give a password for the root
    user. In reality this device node still doesn't exist, it just looks like
    it exits. Fakeroot is lying to the shell process and telling it that
    <emphasis>"yes, this file exists and these are its
    properties"</emphasis>. We'll talk more about how fakeroot actually works
    in a minute.</para>

    <para>In this case <command>hdc</command> is the cd-rom drive, so let's
    try and actually mount the cd-rom:<screen>~#&gt; mkdir disk
~#&gt; mount hdc disk
ERROR: ld.so: object 'libfakeroot.so.0' from LD_PRELOAD cannot be preloaded: ignored.
mount: only root can do that
~#&gt;</screen>So even though it appears we have root permissions, and that we
    created a device node, you see that the system gives an error about
    libfakeroot and about not being able to run mount because we are not
    root.</para>

    <para>If we exit the fakeroot process and then look at the device node
    this is what we see:<screen>~#&gt; exit
~%&gt; ls -l hdc
brw-------  1 user user 22, 0 Aug 18 13:20 hdc
~#&gt;</screen></para>

    <para>Note that it isn't a device node at all, just an empty file owned by
    the current user!</para>

    <para>So what exactly is fakeroot doing? It's using
    <command>LD_PRELOAD</command> to load a shared library into program which
    replaces calls into libc, such as open and stat, and then returns
    information to make it look like certain commands succeeded without
    actually performing those commands. So when creating a device node
    fakeroot will:</para>

    <orderedlist>
      <listitem>
        <para>Intercept the mknod system call and instead of creating a device
        node it'll just create an empty file, owned by the user who run
        fakeroot;</para>
      </listitem>

      <listitem>
        <para>It remembers the fact that mknod was called by root and it
        remembers the properties of the device node;</para>
      </listitem>

      <listitem>
        <para>When a program, such as ls, calls stat on the file fakeroot
        remembers that it was device node, owned by root, and modifies that
        stat information to return this to ls. So ls sees a device node even
        though one doesn't exist.</para>
      </listitem>
    </orderedlist>

    <para>When we tried to run mount we received the error <command>"ERROR:
    ld.so: object 'libfakeroot.so.0' from LD_PRELOAD cannot be preloaded:
    ignored."</command>. This is due to the fact that mount is an suid root
    binary, and for security reasons <command>LD_PRELOAD</command> is disabled
    on suid binaries.</para>

    <para>There are some very important points to remember when dealing with
    fakeroot:</para>

    <orderedlist>
      <listitem>
        <para>All information regarding devices nodes, uid and gids will be
        lost when fakeroot exists;</para>
      </listitem>

      <listitem>
        <para>None of the device nodes, uids or gids will appear on disk.
        However if you tar up a directory from within fakeroot (for example),
        all of these device, uids and gids will appear correctly in the tar
        archive;</para>
      </listitem>

      <listitem>
        <para>Any suid binaries will not interact with fakeroot;</para>
      </listitem>

      <listitem>
        <para>Any static binaries will not interact with fakeroot;</para>
      </listitem>
    </orderedlist>
  </section>

  <section>
    <title>Root filesystem, images and fakeroot</title>

    <para>Many people have been confused by the generated root filesystem not
    containing any valid device nodes. This is in fact the expected
    behaviour.</para>

    <para>When you look at a generated root filesystem you'll notice that the
    device nodes all appear to be incorrectly created:<screen>~%&gt; ls -l tmp/rootfs/dev | grep ttySC
-rw-r--r--  1 root root 0 Aug 16 13:07 ttySC0
-rw-r--r--  1 root root 0 Aug 16 13:07 ttySC1
-rw-r--r--  1 root root 0 Aug 16 13:07 ttySC2
~%&gt;</screen>These are empty files and not device nodes at all.</para>

    <para>If we look in the image files generated from that root filesystem
    then everything is actually ok:<screen>~%&gt; tar -ztvf tmp/deploy/images/titan-titan-20060816030639.rootfs.tar.gz | grep " ./dev/ttySC"
crw-r----- root/root     204,8 2006-08-16 13:07:12 ./dev/ttySC0
crw-r----- root/root     204,9 2006-08-16 13:07:12 ./dev/ttySC1
crw-r----- root/root    204,10 2006-08-16 13:07:12 ./dev/ttySC2
~%&gt;</screen>The images are created from within the same fakeroot process as
    the creation of the root filesystem and therefore it correctly picks up
    all of the special files and permissions from fakeroot.</para>

    <para><emphasis role="bold">NOTE: This means that you cannot use the root
    filesystem in tmp/rootfs directly on your target device. You need to use
    the .tar.gz image and uncompress it, as root, in order to generate a root
    filesystem which is suitable for use directly on the target (or as an NFS
    root).</emphasis></para>
  </section>

  <section>
    <title>Recipes and fakeroot</title>

    <para>Some applications require that you have root permissions to run
    their installation routine, and this is another area where fakeroot can
    help. In a recipe the method for a standard task, such as the
    <command>do_install</command> method for the <emphasis>install</emphasis>
    task:<screen>do_install() {
    install -d ${D}${bindir} ${D}${sbindir} ${D}${mandir}/man8 \
               ${D}${sysconfdir}/default \
               ${D}${sysconfdir}/init.d \
               ${D}${datadir}/arpwatch

    oe_runmake install DESTDIR=${D}
    oe_runmake install-man DESTDIR=${D}
    ...</screen>can be modified to run within a fakeroot environment by
    prefixing the method name with fakeroot:<screen><emphasis role="bold">fakeroot</emphasis> do_install() {
    install -d ${D}${bindir} ${D}${sbindir} ${D}${mandir}/man8 \
               ${D}${sysconfdir}/default \
               ${D}${sysconfdir}/init.d \
               ${D}${datadir}/arpwatch

    oe_runmake install DESTDIR=${D}
    oe_runmake install-man DESTDIR=${D}
    ...</screen></para>
  </section>
</section>